


All I Need

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds, Spencer Reid - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Past Torture, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 16:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9280361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry ;)





	

Every time he looked at her, a pang of guilt rolled through him. Looking at the burn marks and deep scars that covered her body reminded him every day that he hadn’t protected her. Since that day, she had struggled to feel beautiful. She’d been shyer in the bedroom. She’d started covering up more - wearing longer sleeves and long pants when they weren’t necessarily or even comfortable. He knew that she couldn’t stand to look at herself now, but he didn’t know if that was because of her own insecurities, or because she thought he no longer found her attractive, which was absolutely not the case, or both. All he knew was that he wanted and needed to do something to help her.

He was just as much attracted to her if not more so than the day they met. Over the years, he’d memorized every curve of her body. The scars did nothing to take away her beauty. If anything, they enhanced it; they were a sign of how hard she fought to stay alive and come back to him. As he watched her involuntarily pull down the sleeve of her pajama top, he realized that she hadn’t truly come back to him. Each day, he felt her drift a little further. He had to take a chance.

“Come here,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her into their bedroom. “I need you to see how beautiful you are - or at least hear how I see you.” 

“What?” she asked surprised, a short look of fear in her eyes.

She was taken off guard as he placed her in front of the floor length mirror. “I feel you drifting away from me,” he started, “Every single day, I think what might have happened had I been there.”

“You couldn’t have been there, babe. It wasn’t your fault,” she said, a tear falling from her eyes. “I just don’t feel beautiful anymore. He took that away from me.”

Turning her toward the mirror, he whispered into her ear. “He might have taken the feeling from you, but he did not take away how beautiful you are to me.” Gently, he grazed his hands over the plains of her stomach. Once flat and toned, her stomach was now marred with two long scars - each from a straight-edge knife the unsub had used to torture her. The most amount of pain was inflicted, but it wouldn’t have killed her - the cuts weren’t deep enough. 

Tears continued to fall from her eyes as she leaned back into him, covering his hands with her own. “Every mark he made is just another piece of you I get to memorize. It’s another place I get to kiss.” He ran his hands over her arms, which sported many burn marks from lit cigarettes. “To me, these represent the fire that burned within you to stay alive. Everything about you is beautiful. Always was and always will be. Please never doubt that, Y/N.”

Slowly, he pulled the long-sleeved pajama top she was wearing off her body. She fought the instinct to cover herself, instead grabbing his hand and running them both over the scars; their peaks and valleys starting to take on a new meaning alongside his words. Since she’d come home, she’d thought her long-term boyfriend would no longer find her beautiful, but here he was more in love with who she and how she looked than the day they met. He was what a real man should be, but so few actually were. The scars mainly adorned her top half, those on the bottom were much less shallow and beginning to fade.

“I thought you’d turn away from me,” she wept. “I thought you’d look at me and think of what I used to look like and what he did to me. I thought you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore.”

A tear fell from his own eyes as he rested his head against hers. “The only negative thing I think about when I see you is that I wasn’t able to prevent this,” he said. “Even now, I would do anything to wipe it all away.”

She reached out, touching his arms with both hands. “It’s not your fault, Spence,” she cried, moving into him to rest her head against his chest. “There is nothing you could’ve done. I don’t blame you, so please, please don’t blame yourself.” She looked up into his eyes, her tears the heaviest they’d ever been. It was the first time he realized she truly didn’t blame him. “Just continue to love me and that’s all I need. I’ll make you a deal,” she started, “I will try to feel beautiful in my own skin again and you try and let go of the guilt you feel. We’ll come up with a word we can say when we’re feeling guilty or not beautiful and we’ll snap each other out of it.”

“Deal,” he said, the wave of tears that had crested at his eyes finally cascading over. “I will love you and think your beautiful until we’re both old and gray. I can promise you that.” He wiped her tears away as he placed a sweet kiss on her lips. One of the first smiles he had seen in a long time formed on her face as she leaned into him, taking his hands and placing them around her waist.

“Then that’s all I need.”


End file.
